sneak peek

I haven't got so much in the way of patience, so although it's not done yet, here's a bit of a look at how the bodice is coming along. This was my project for yesterday, and while I didn't quite complete it, I'm pretty happy! The first thing I did was to fit a toile over my newly improved corset. I decided that since I'm using such a heavily patterned fabric, I'd try to see if I could cut the entire bodice in one piece. I took the pattern I'd drafted for my last dress, added points front and back, removed the side seams, and slashed the v-shaped opening up the middle. I cut this out of muslin and then got my husband to help with some revisions on it. He's really good at this for some reason. I think it's the engineering bent. He'll look critically at the fit for a couple of minutes, then say that I should take up the straps a bit or narrow the shoulders or whatever. Yesterday I introduced him to the notion of drawing directly on the toile. This was exceedingly popular, especially since in adjusting the arm-scythe, I happened to get accidentally poked with the pen a number of times. Urgh. Anyway, he did really nice job, so I cut out my lining and interlining, then got him to look at them again. After a thumbs-up from the dress engineer, I added a bit of boning. You can see the boning pattern for the back here:


 

and the front here:


 

Following Julie's example, I ran pieces of boning up over the shoulders again. I think she got this idea from Sempstress. It worked for the corset; hopefully it will work here as well. The boning is pretty light in the dress, but I've given up hope that I'll be able to wear this sans corset anyway....with that ladder lacing in the front, I think it would be pretty unattractive.

The ladder lacing is held in place with a double row of ribbons after Jen Thompson's example. It worked really well once I actually went to her description and did it correctly, duh. I put the ribbon strips directly over my boning and stitched right through them. My sewing machine wasn't delighted with this, but it did do a fine job of securing everything into place. Helpful hint #1: don't use a plastic yarn needle to lace the dress; they don't respond well to shear stress. I really like the ladder lacing, although I'll have to figure out what I want to lace the dress with exactly. Helpful hint #2: single-ply worsted isn't a good choice, even for a test fit...single-ply = pulls apart...duh again. Here's a close-up of my lacing strips. Note that there are extra points sewn across. Right...ready, fire, aim.


 

No pictures of the outside just yet. I've got the lining and outside sewn together, but need to sew up the armholes before modeling it. More commentary on that tomorrow.